THEODORE ROOSEVELT, twenty-sixth
President of the United States, was born October 27, 1858, at 28 East 20th
Street, New York City, the elder son and second child of Theodore
Roosevelt (1831-1878) and Martha Bulloch. He represents the seventh
generation, father and son, all born on Manhattan Island, from Klaes
Martensen van Roosevelt, who came to New Amsterdam from Holland in 1644.
Col. Roosevelt ‘s paternal ancestors were chiefly of Holland stock. His
father ‘s mother, however, a Pennsylvanian, was of Scottish descent. His
father was a hard-working, successful New York business man, a keen lover
of out-of-door life, especially of horses and driving, and contributed
largely both of his time and means to various reform movements. Col.
Roosevelt, in his Autobiography, pays tribute to his father’s
practical charitable work. "He was a stanch friend of Charles Loring
Brace, and was particularly interested in the Newsboys’ Lodging Houses and
in the night schools and in getting children off the streets and out on
farms in the West’ ‘—a friendship that suggests Col. Roosevelt’s own
life-long friendship with that other practical reformer, Jacob A. Riis.
Several of the children that the elder Roosevelt so helped had successful,
and some of them, like Gov. Brady of Alaska, had noteworthy careers.

Col. Roosevelt ‘s mother, a native
of Georgia, was a fine type of southern woman, "sweet, gracious,
beautiful, a delightful companion and beloved by everybody." The ancestor
of the Bulloch family came from the Scottish Hebrides to South Carolina
about two hundred years ago, and on this side Col. Roosevelt is
predominately Scottish, with some English and Huguenot blood. His mother’s
great-great-grandfather, Archibald Bulloch, was the first Revolutionary
"President" of Georgia. Two of her brothers had distinguished careers in
the Confederate Navy in the Civil War: Admiral James Dunwoodie Bulloch,
the builder of the Alabama; and Irving Bulloch, a midshipman on the
Alabama, who fired the last gun discharged from her batteries in
the famous fight with the Kearsage.

The future President was a delicate,
sickly boy and very near-sighted, and the larger part of his early
education he received from his mother, and from her sister, his aunt Anna
Bulloch, who lived with the family and as a small child entertained him
for hours with tales of life on the Georgia plantations. He also had
tutors and for a few months attended Professor McMullen ‘s School in East
20th Street, near the house where he was born.

When he was ten years old, he made
his first journey to Europe, and four years later travelled in Egypt, up
the Nile, in the Holy Land and part of Syria, visited Greece and
Constantinople, and with his brother and two sisters spent a summer with a
German family in Dresden. The trip to Egypt, so far as he was concerned,
was largely given over to practical ornithology, and some of the specimens
he secured at that time are still in the Smithsonian and New York Museums.
From very early boyhood, and especially after the family moved to Oyster
Bay, on Long Island, he took a deep interest in Natural History. Before he
was ten years old, with his cousins, he established "the Roosevelt Museum
of Natural History;" at twelve he was taking lessons in taxidermy; and
while at Harvard he had serious intentions of making science—as a field
naturalist—his life-work. Col. Roosevelt ‘s later success as an explorer
and faunal naturalist are not an accident nor an assumption, but the
ripening of a deep-seated taste for and appreciation of the study.

On his return to America, at the age
of fifteen, he prepared for college under Mr. Arthur Cutler, who later
founded the Cutler School, in New York City, entering Harvard in 1876 and
being graduated in 1880. He was a good, plodding student, and though
suffering from handicaps of ill-health, finished within the first tenth of
his class and was awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was still much
interested in natural history; and before he left Harvard, had written two
chapters of his history of the Naval War of
1812.

In reviewing Col. Roosevelt’s
remarkably diversified public career, one must always have in mind the
energetic and determined characteristics that have enabled him in such a
brief time to accomplish so much. It is not that as a young man he was
specially gifted—his outstanding talent is probably that of leadership;
but that with indomitable energy he has made the best out of everything he
attempted. He says himself: "I like to believe that, by what I have
accomplished without great gifts, I may be a source of
encouragement to American boys. " And adds a recent biographer, "Roosevelt
is not a living proof of what a man may do with gifts; he is a living
proof of what a man may do despite the lack of them. Out of a weak child
he made a powerful man: out of half-blindness he made a boxer, an
omnivorous reader, a good shot; out of a liking for authorship, rather
than a talent for it, he made a distinguished author; out of natural force
and a feeling for the charm of things he made a style not only clear and
forceful but, at times, charming. Out of a voice and manner never meant
for oratory he made a speaker. Out of a sense of duty he made a soldier,
out of a soldier a governor, out of a governor a Vice-President,
and—wonder of wonders—out of a Vice-President a President."

Col. Roosevelt ‘s father had been
closely associated with local charitable and reform movements, and it is
not surprising that we find the son, upon his entrance into political
life, as a minority leader of the State legislature, 1882-1884, casting
his influence upon the side of several measures for social and civic
betterment. Notable among these were measures for the improvement of
working conditions for women and children and the Civil Service bills,
which, though proposed by Governor Grover Cleveland and supported by the
rival party in power, he was largely instrumental in securing upon the
statute books. In 1884, he was a delegate to the Republican National
Convention.

The years 1884-1886, and a
considerable part of other years in the eighties, he spent upon his ranch
in North Dakota, hunting, reading, writing, and adding immeasurably to his
outlook on human nature and to his physical health. In 1886, he was
Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City in the triangular campaign
that is tragically remembered by the death of the political economist,
Henry George, one of the candidates, upon the eve of the election. Though
only a young man and in a normally Democratic city, Theodore Roosevelt
showed such splendid fighting qualities and vote-getting ability as to
make him from that time forward a factor in local and national politics.
In 1889, he was made a member of the United States Civil Service
Commission, where he served with distinction until 1895, resigning in that
year to become President of the New York City Police Board.

Theodore Roosevelt had begun his
political career as a practical reformer, and this difficult office, the
graveyard of so many reputations, gave him the long-sought opportunity for
putting into effect what were now well-developed ideas as to honesty and
efficiency in public life. His administration was not popular with the
politicians; but his energy, absolute fairness, and close personal contact
with the men of the force brought the department to a high state of
efficiency.

In 1897-1898, he served as Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, where he applied himself with the same enthusiasm
that had made remarkable his terms as a Civil Service organizer and a
metropolitan police head. He was even then a stanch advocate of
preparedness, and in the face of the pending trouble in Cuba, it was
largely the result of his personal effort and energy, and his alone, that
the fleet and the entire department were in such splendid readiness.

At the beginning of the War with
Spain, he resigned to organize with Surgeon, now General, Leonard Wood,
the First U. S. Volunteer Cavalry, popularly known as the Rough Riders."
He was made lieutenant-colonel of the regiment, which distinguished itself
in Cuba, and was promoted colonel for gallantry at the battle of Las
Guasimas. When the regiment returned in September, 1898, Colonel Roosevelt
was the unanimous popular choice as Republican candidate for governor of
the State of New York, and after a spectacular campaign was elected—having
been Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Colonel of the Rough Riders and
Governor, all in one year. He served from January 1, 1899, to December 31,
1900.

November 4, 1900, he was elected
Vice-President of the United States, for the term of 1901-1905, and
succeeded to the presidency on the death of President William McKinley,
September 14. 1901. November 8, 1904, he was elected President by the
largest popular majority ever accorded a candidate— a plurality of
2,545,515 votes. President Roosevelt’s administration is not alone notable
for the great personality he injected into it, but for the strong men that
he gathered about him and the substantial results it accomplished. The
efficiency of the executive departments in Washington and of the
administrative service throughout the country was never more marked than
in the years of his presidency; and never was the country more respected
abroad. In a short sketch, any list of these achievements must necessarily
be incomplete. Among the more notable are: The settlement of the coal
strike of 1902; the pure food and drug act; the establishment of the
Department of Commerce and Labor; the act giving the Interstate Commerce
Commission power to regulate railway rates; the employers’ liability act;
the first important prosecutions of trusts under the Sherman law; and the
inauguration of the movements for the conservation of natural resources
and for the improvement of country life. Those involving international
relations; the negotiating of twenty-four treaties of general arbitration:
the reorganization of the consular service; the arbitration of the
European claims against Venezuela; the settlement of troubles in Cuba and
Santo Domingo; the arbitration of the Alaska Boundary Dispute; the
protection of lives and property of Americans in Morocco—’ ‘Perdicaris
alive or Raizuli dead"; the settlement of the Russian-Japanese War—the
Treaty of Portsmouth; the securing of the Panama Canal; the sending of the
battleship fleet around the world.

In 1906, in recognition of his
service in the Portsmouth peace, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,
$40,000, with which he endowed a Foundation of Industrial Peace, having
among others as trustees Oscar Straus, the late Seth Low and John
Mitchell. He also received, from nearly three hundred of the most powerful
public men of France, a copy of the first edition of the Memoirs of the
Duke de Sully, Prime Minister of Henry IV, of France, inscribed with
their signatures, as "a token of their recognition of the persistent
initiative he has taken toward gradually substituting friendly and
judicial for violent methods in case of conflict between nations." For it
has been his policy, as President of the United States, that "has realized
the most generous hopes to be found in history."

In 1909-1910, Colonel Roosevelt
spent a year in East Africa, hunting big game and collecting specimens and
skins for the Smithsonian Institution. He returned by way of Europe,
visiting Egypt, Italy, France, Germany and Great Britain. In Paris, he
made a notable address before the historic Sorbonne; in Germany, he
was accorded distinguished honours by the people and the Kaiser; and while
in London, acted as special Ambassador of the United States at the funeral
of King Edward VII. His welcome home on his return to New York was a
triumph of personal regard.

Plunging again into politics, in
1912 he was the candidate of the Progressive Party, in protest against the
methods used in the convention to defeat him as the regular nominee of the
Republicans. Without an organization, he polled 4,119,507 votes (more than
630,000 more than President Taft, the Republican candidate), but was
defeated by Woodrow Wilson.

From the beginning of the great
European War, in 1914, Colonel Roosevelt was the greatest single influence
in awakening Americanism, protesting against the violation of treaties in
the outrages upon Belgium and against divided loyalty at home; writing,
travelling, speaking for "preparedness," of which he has been an urgent
advocate for more than thirty years, and of which he gave practical
demonstration in the efficiency of the army and navy during his
administration. In 1916, he refused the unanimous nomination of the
Progressive Party, endorsing Justice Hughes and refusing to jeopardize by
a third-party ticket what he considered the vital interest of the country.

In addition to his trip to South Africa, Colonel
Roosevelt has hunted much big game in America, both in his ranching days
and as a recreation in later life. And he has written about his trips and
life in the open as delightfully and with as sure a hand as he has in his
more serious literary efforts. The book of his African trip and the later
book of his exploration of "The River of Doubt," and his visit to the
principal countries of South America, 1913-1914, have a charm that is
possessed by few books of travel and natural history. He is author of many
books, covering a wide variety of subjects—biographical, historical,
travel, out-door life, civics and statecraft, and many others. Since his
college days, he has contributed leading articles to magazines and
reviews. From 1909-1914, he was on the editorial staff of The Outlook, and
since 1915 has been a regular editor of The Metropolitan Magazine.

Colonel Roosevelt is a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, and numerous other clubs and associations. He was
President American History Association, 1912-1913. He has received the
honorary degrees of LL.D., Columbia, 1899; Hope College, 1901; Yale, 1901;
Harvard, 1902; Northwestern, 1903; University of Chicago, 1903; University
of California, 1903; University of Pennsylvania, 1905; George Washington
University, 1909; Cambridge University, 1910; D.C.L., Oxford University,
1910; Ph.D., University of Berlin, 1910. He is a member of the Dutch
Reformed Church and takes a deep interest in all religious movements.

Colonel Roosevelt married, October 27, 1880, Alice
Cabot Lee, daughter of George Cabot Lee. Mrs. Roosevelt died February 14,
1884, leaving one daughter, Alice. December 2, 1886, in London, England,
he married Edith Kermit Carow, daughter of Charles Carow, of New York
City. They have five children: Theodore, Jr., Ethel, Kermit, Archie and
Quentin. Colonel Roosevelt’s home is at Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York.

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